


FeatherSwitched

by MorbidOptimist



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Teen Titans - All Media Types
Genre: Adopted Children, Adopted Sibling Relationship, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Family Angst, Family Feels, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-11
Updated: 2018-07-11
Packaged: 2019-06-08 16:01:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15246825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MorbidOptimist/pseuds/MorbidOptimist
Summary: An anon once asked: Do you ever imagine a reverse Teen Titans/Batman AU where Arella drops off her baby with Batman while Dick gets trained to become Azarath's official demon-slayer? And then Robin goes to Earth years later to kill Raven, who is blissfully unaware that she's destined to cause the end of the world?





	FeatherSwitched

It was one of those nights in Gotham that happened too often for Batman's liking; the swell of 'brutal' crimes that had little to do with costumed villains and rather hinged on victims of circumstance. 

The young woman, hardly more than a runaway teen by the looks of her, had been cornered in an alley when their paths intersected. 

The first surprise had been the bulge of her belly. 

The second, had been the declaration that her water had broke. 

The young woman had been in rough shape; as he had helped her into his Batmobile, he'd felt a rush of humbling fear that in her state, she wouldn't make it to the hospital alive. 

He'd raced against the clock, practically driving on air for his speeded maneuvering, but at the woman's burbled pleas, he accepted the woman's choice of refocusing his attention to that of her child. 

While the Batmobile wasn't the most ideal place, for a birth, he'd thankfully helped birth a few babies into the world, and stashed a variety of supplies in his vehicle for all manners of things. 

A third surprise, were the two pairs of glowing red eyes under the woman's skin, leading to a few murmurs from the woman that the baby wasn't altogether human. 

He'd passed it off at the time, assuming the woman held many of the internal prejudices against mutant and meta people, and kept his focus on the head that already begun to crown. 

In the faint few breaths the woman had left, she'd held the baby girl; a smile graced her lips, and tears of a different kind of pain trickled down her face. 

'Rachel," she's murmured, before her final breath.

The baby hadn't cried on the way to the hospital; he'd offered the doctors the surname 'Roth' for the infant, provided by Alfred's guestimations after searching through missing persons reports and coming up blank. 

Bruce Wayne made his appearance the following morning, after the story of the baby broke headlines. 

With his good money and easy charms, he'd secured the infant a comfortable future as his ward. 

The baby, although strange, had been one of the greatest points of joy in his life. 

She and Alfred had also taken to each other like peas in a pod, and it felt good to see the old man's eyes sparkle at Rachel. 

Of course, there had been difficulties with the baby they'd not forseen; she turned out to require a more carnivorous diet than they'd anticipated and whenever the baby grew upset or laughed, objects would float and lights would flicker. 

She hadn't stayed an infant forever. 

And with the passage of time his daughter had learned not only how to mold her face to blend into the rest of humanity, but also the essence of balance, and how to control her powers through meditation. 

He spent hours with her, teaching her how to breathe and focus her mind. 

He couldn't have been prouder, the day he'd returned from a long night of keeping the streets of Gotham clean, to find Rachel sitting in the chair of his supercomputer, a smug grin on her face. 

While she'd been too young to be on the streets just then, he started to train her.

By the time she was ten years old, she was perhaps more skilled than even Jason was. 

He was thankful, his Robins adored her as much as he did and he was admittedly a little grateful that the children were content to run each other exhausted on their own; Alfred had carried their passed out forms out of the cave and into bed more times than he could count. 

Rachel hadn't chosen to pick up the mantle of a Robin. 

With her magical qualities, she'd explained that she was a bird of a darker feather, and made her true persona, "Raven". 

Almost as smart as he was, Raven was a force to be reckoned with. 

Her counterpoints had likely been the tipping point in his and Selina's relationship, convincing them to take a final matrimonial step. 

Her powers were perhaps an even greater force to be reckoned with.

They allowed her to easily incapacitate foes and she was never without a trick up her sleeve for tight spaces. She had the miraculous ability to heal wounds, both in her self an others. She could fly without the aid of gadgets, her strength was greater than any normal human, and she could sense emotions to an almost aggravating degree. 

She could make a crowd of people fall silent; she could change her shape or shift her voice, and force any man to shrink back to his knees and cower before her, and more importantly, she could convince a stranger in need to trust her blindly and soothe their pain. 

Even the costumed rogues, had allowed themselves to be comforted on occasion, by Raven's truly empathetic words and calming presence. 

It was that empathy, that was both her greatest strength and greatest weakness. 

Gotham was not kind, to psychics. 

He was lucky that his more magically inclined friends at the League had been more than happy to assist Raven in her magical training, though a part of him would always blame himself for not being able to give the girl everything she needed himself. 

By the time Raven was fourteen, Tim and Raven were fighting crime with a group of other super-powered children led by a Tameranian warlord ex-princess on the other side of the continent; which filled himself and Selina with both equal parts pride and dread. 

Their greatest worry for her was that she'd soon grow preoccupied with thoughts of dating and juggling Rachel's social life with crimefighting and more challenging studies at school. 

It was her right, he felt, to have been allowed to grow and thrive as a child ought. 

Instead, something horrible happened that would haunt him more than the dying breaths of Rachel's mother, and linger in restlessly Catwoman's clenched jaw. 

It was not the first time Raven had been kidnapped, held hostage, or used against him as part of a rogue's plan; but it was the first time, that he learned of the cult surrounding Rachel's birth mother. 

He had found her in a flock of unholy madmen, praising her as the jem of a dark devil that would bring about the end of reality; their fanatic devotion to his daughter had been frightening in too many ways to count. 

What was worse, was the boy who had taken a knife to his daughter's unconscious form, intent on stopping the threat to the planet before it could take root. 

Perhaps it was the sentimentality he couldn't deny having built with her, but he was unable to let the boy terminate Raven, even after learning about her heritage and her true form, and Selina had been even less inclined to allow Raven's death than Batman. 

He had made the choice to save Rachel's life, rather than detain the boy. 

He sometimes wondered if that had been the right choice, in the late nights he thought over Raven's healing factor. 

Domiel Greyson was a troubled youth as intent on killing Raven as he was devoted to his apparent godess, Azar. 

They had encountered him many times after that, with each new attempt on Raven's life growing closer than the last, even going so far as to adopt his own persona, Red-X, to drive in the point. 

The hardest part, was that the boy truly seemed to care about Earth, about justice, about saving the week.  
No amount of begging or enticing on his or his wife's parts however, could persuade the boy to abandon his cause and join his own. 

As hard as the situation was for him and for Selina, he was helpless but to imagine the struggle it caused in his daughter.  
Raven, wasn't quite the same after learning the truth about her father. 

It pained him to watch her grow distant, more withdrawn, as if she was afraid that any emotion she had would be the one to unleash Trigon upon the world. 

The league members vowed to assist her, and he liked to think that aside from the support from her peers, the support of Zatanna, Dianah, Clark, and J'onn, helped ease some of Raven's troubled heart. 

Watching Raven grow had been his greatest joy. 

Watching her scream at the mercy of an ancient spellcraft, bound by some unseen ritual of the universe, had frightened him. 

Watching Raven rise up, bathed in white light, her soul an avian blanket of power forcing the demon lord back into the dimensional rift from whence he came, had humbled him. 

When Rachel's body plummeted from the sky, pushed to the brink by her exhaustion, he'd shouted his heart from his throat, Selina's mirrored scream echoing in his ears. 

Thankfully, his daughter's team leader had flown forth, catching her midfall, and landed her safely for him to see. 

The way Raven's body had looked so young and lifeless, brought tears to eyes, even when his mind's eye took note of her shallow breaths. 

The league had regarded Raven with a new sort of breadth after that; apparently not quite sure what to make of her apparent god-like power. 

She'd almost single-handedly defeated one of the most evil influences in all the universes, transfigured stone back into flesh, and bloodied seas back into life sustaining saltwater. 

The boy came to her bedside, one night, according to Jason, who'd refused to leave her side as she laid in a regenerative coma.

When she woke, he found her again. 

Unable to abandon the fear that she might one day cross the line, he asked to join them, to keep an eye on her. 

The refusal had been moments from his lips, when Rachel surprising both him and the boy, accepted the offer. 

He didn't trust Red-X. 

He didn't like him taking on the Robin name. 

He didn't like personally training the boy as Raven returned to the Titan's any more, though the distance between the two calmed his nerves somewhat. 

'Red Robin' as far as he was concerned, was a threat to his family, though Raven's insistence otherwise stilled his tongue.  
A few years went by, he'd begrudgingly grown to accept Greyson. 

'Nightwing' now, and engaged to Raven's sister-in-arms Starfire with a child on the way, Batman almost happily resigned himself to the returned feelings of domesticity. 

While the carefree nature of her youth hadn't yet seemed to return to his daughter, Bruce hoped that in time, Raven would once again experience the happiness and joy in the world she strived to protect, as she had when she was younger. 

He hoped that when she finally found it, he'd be able to be there, cheering her from the sidelines, watching her inner glow shine brighter than any searchlights, return the strength to her she'd given him, by being the beautifully amazing human being that she was.


End file.
